Yahoo to Close Some Chat Rooms
Chat rooms that could be used by sexual predators seeking access to children will be shut down by Yahoo Inc. under terms of an agreement between the Internet portal and the attorneys general of New York and Nebraska.
Yahoo’s decision marks the first time an Internet media company has undertaken systemwide controls over chat rooms in which predators link up with children, see them on Web cameras and then arrange meetings, New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer and his counterpart from Nebraska, Jon Bruning, said Wednesday.
Concerns about sexual predators have plagued Internet companies for years. America Online recently settled a lawsuit brought by a California girl who said she was seduced by an online monitor whom AOL hired to protect children, the girl’s lawyer said Wednesday.
“There was a settlement, and everyone’s happy,” said Olivier Taillieu, the girl’s Beverly Hills attorney, who declined to disclose the terms. “She is satisfied that AOL takes extraordinary steps to provide its members a safe and secure online experience.”
A spokeswoman for AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., said Wednesday that she was unable to immediately confirm the settlement.
Microsoft Corp. closed its chat rooms in 28 countries in 2003; it has maintained them in the United States for subscribers to its MSN Internet access program. AOL monitors its chat rooms targeted at children.
Spitzer, who said his three daughters surf the Internet, described the Yahoo sites Wednesday as so horrible that he refused to name them. Most were under Yahoo’s “Schools and Education” category.
He showed slides of Web pages found by an investigator who posed as a 14-year-old girl. They included “Kiddies who love sex,” “8- to 12-year-old girls who love men” and “Teen girls for fat older men.” The fake 14-year-old received 35 messages of a sexual nature in less than half an hour, Spitzer said.
Yahoo, which voluntarily suspended user-created chat rooms in June, said it was still deciding whether to reinstate the ability of users to create them.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., company also said it would restrict access to all its existing chat rooms to users older than 18, based on information its users provide during registration, and eliminate the category of chat rooms specifically for teens.
If Yahoo does allow its users to create chat rooms, it will screen them for sexual content, under terms of the agreement with Spitzer and Bruning, and bring them down within 24 hours if they depict sex acts.
Spitzer said the agreement with Yahoo was voluntary and declined to speculate on whether Internet companies that allowed such chat rooms faced criminal or civil liability if a predator victimized a child that he or she found on the Internet.
The agreement is “an affirmative step for Yahoo,” Spitzer said at a news conference.
The attorney general said his office would investigate other Internet service providers with similar problems.
“I don’t want to generalize about other Internet providers, but we will look at them,” he said.
Spitzer said Yahoo was vulnerable because users could sign on without providing personal information, making child molesters difficult to detect.
Yahoo has removed or barred the posting of 70,000 rooms whose names suggested illegal conduct, including the promotion of sex between adults and children. The number represents 11.4% of the 614,000 names Yahoo reviewed.
In an agreement with Spitzer dated Friday, Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan acknowledged that “certain individuals, interested in engaging in sexual conduct with minors, have at times entered or even created chat rooms for such purposes.” Yahoo is committed to working with law enforcement “to minimize, target and take action against such behavior,” the letter said.
Yahoo agreed to develop education materials promoting the safe use of chat rooms and donate $175,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s New York affiliates and additional free online advertising to promote Internet safety.
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Reuters news service was used in compiling this report.
